XI 



FLOWERS AND POLLINATION 



RARELY does it occur to the gardener, and still 

 more rarely perhaps to the person who never 

 gardens at all but who is still an ardent lover of 

 flowers, to consider what flowers really are. They 

 are taken for granted quite as much, in their way, as 

 vegetables are in theirs; and what they are and why 

 they are, and how they fulfil their purpose, ordinarily 

 seem unimportant. It is with their beauty that most 

 persons are concerned. 



But these other things are important — highly so — 

 if intelligent work is to be carried on among them, or 

 with vegetation generally. For the differences in 

 flowers make differences in dealing with them very 

 necessary. What, then, are flowers ? 



Those who remember their botany will recall that 

 flowers are those portions of a plant which bear the 

 organs of reproduction — but how many remember their 

 botany, I wonder. Flowers exist therefore for the 

 purpose of reproducing the species, and the fact that 

 they are beautiful is only incidental. The parts of a 

 flower that make it beautiful are never the essential 

 parts. Indeed, the essential organs — the stamens and 



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